ash in your mouth
by Raindog Bride
Summary: Leliana and Warden Tabris in Fort Drakon at the end of all things. She was never meant for happy ever afters.


**ash in your mouth**

**0.-0.-0**

**Summary: Leliana and Warden Tabris in Fort Drakon at the end of all things. She was never meant for happy ever afters. **

**0.-0.-0**

_**Author's Note: **Very rough, straight off the top of my head, but my first try in the fandom. Be gentle._

**0.-0.-0**

Fort Drakon was a charnel house. Nothing had prepared Leliana for it- not the ruin of the marketplace, or the broken gates of Denerim, with the dead still burning in the streets. Everything was saturated in the hot, bitter smell of Darkspawn and wavering, nails-on-chalkboard feel of the Fade beginning to breach.

Her Warden wasn't taking it too well.

Bell staggered and fell with her back against the wall, Darkspawn blood still streaked crazily across one temple. Her hand came up before Leliana could act, waving her off. "I'm fine," she said. "No- hold off a minute, I just need a minute."

Ash blonde hair was soot-streaked and filthy, the long sweep of one ear seared from one spell too many. Her hands were trembling so badly that when she slung her shield off and tried to wrest the cap off of her waterskin, she nearly let it drop into her lap before managing to take a shaky pull. She looked frightened and too young, and exhausted besides.

"We have no time," said Sten, flatly, from the bend in the hallway further on. "You are allowing the enemy the advantage."

"We have time," Leliana responded in a business-like fashion, fumbling bandages out of her pack while Bell's hound sat down beside his mistress and began to methodically lick the blood off his front forepaw. Bell's hand, seemingly without her notice, found its way to his back and scratched absently, and she didn't even react when Leliana unbuckled the dented and ruined scrap of armor from her shoulder and began to treat the bruised and broken flesh beneath. The Qunari, implacable, turned and watched the passageway ahead of them, the hilt of that enormous broadsword yawning over one shoulder like a massive tooth.

Bell was taking deep, shaky breaths by now, jerkily removing one of her gauntlets and running her fingers through her hair, then wincing as Leliana poured something shockingly stringent over her wounds.

"We should have brought Wynne," murmured Leliana, her hands busy. "She would have found a way to keep you from making such a mess of yourself."

Bell barked out a sudden laugh, and struggled to get her hands back into her armored gauntlets. "I have you for that," she muttered sourly in return, but her eyes were too bright by far.

"I couldn't bring her, anyways," she continued, her voice too quick, too matter-of-fact. "Alistair- The others. They needed her more. They wouldn't have been able to hold the gates without her."

The unanswered question snaked treacherously through the air after that, but Leliana knows better than to ask. Morrigan's name had disappeared from the air as surely as the witch herself- Bell refused to speak of her, and refused to discuss exactly what they were going to do on a battlefield short one of their most powerful members.

She hadn't even told Alistair. She'd pinned him to the gates as surely as if she'd used a spear, throwing his duty in his face with not so much as a quaver in her voice, and seemingly ignoring his confusion. She then turned with her dog, her Qunari, and her bard, and headed straight to the Alienage.

Leliana's unease wasn't entirely unmerited, she knew this. Killing the Archdemon was no small feat- none of the stories had given her any illusions in this manner, she just could not get over the tight-lipped silence that Bell had exhibited ever since leaving Redcliffe. She'd quit frequenting Alistair's tent, quit joining the rest of them around the fire at night, and chose instead to spend her evenings locked in conference with Riordan and the Arl.

In fact, she hadn't had a spare word for Leliana since they'd to find Redcliffe in flames.

"The horn- from the gate," said Bell Tabris with barely concealed nervousness, shredding a hank of tough salt jerky in her tremoring hands, not eating. "That was the call for reinforcements, right? I couldn't quite catch the second sounding, was it-?"

"They held," said Leliana, soothingly. "I heard it, clearly. It echoed around the city." She smiled, and nudged her, "It will make a good story, yes? The brave new king holding the gates of the fallen city while his lady love storms up the tower to slay the Archdemon?"

Bell obliged her by snorting a laugh, but Leliana's relief faded when her friend's laugh trickled down into something that sounded three seconds away from complete hysterics. Worried, the hound shifted and inserted his head into her lap, a gesture that would have been sweet if not for the crusted gore around his jaws. Bell grimaced and pushed him away, but petted him afterwards, regaining her calm. Reassured, the hound proceeded to sniff out the shredded, useless bits of jerky on the ground beside her and snuffled them up.

Leliana let the moment pass, and instead focused on wrapping up Bell's shoulder, while her friend took a ragged breath and rubbed awkwardly at her eye with the heel of one hand.

She knew she should feel more for Alistair, trapped at the gate with the bulk of the army while his woman slipped into the worst of the fighting. She knew that a certain amount of empathy was required of her, as both a lay sister of the Chantry, and as a bard, but Maker help her, she was too dizzy with relief to be here. At the end of all things, with an Archdemon to be slain, with her.

So thinking, she let her hands linger on her friend's hair a little, then gave her opposite shoulder a squeeze and sat beside her against the wall, letting her head sink down and to the side until it rested gently against hers.

Bell let out her breath.

Sten continued to ignore them. Having voiced his objections, he seemed content to stand guard, and between his unnatural stillness and the fact of his back still facing towards them, Leliana could almost fool herself into thinking that it was just the two of them there, in the bloody, quiet darkness.

The darkness was so oppressive that Leliana nearly jolted when Bell finally spoke. In a small, rough voice, her lips barely moving, Bell murmured, "Distract me. Please."

"How shall I do that, then?" Leliana asked quietly, her head bent inward towards Bell.

Bell inhaled, and huffed a nervous laugh, "I haven't a clue. Talk to me. Anything." Her hands wrapped themselves around each other, as if by gripping them tightly she could bring herself some small measure of control. "Tell me what you plan to do, I think. Once this is over."

Leliana's voice became teasing, despite herself. "Are you sure you wish to know? It seems I have a song or two to pen. You may not wish to hear what I have written already."

"I _like _your songs," said Bell softly, leaning into her a little. Her voice was growing thick with exhaustion, and Leliana knew that if her friend hadn't been close to falling over, she never would have allowed herself to get so close. Still, she was greedy at heart, Maker forgive her and she would take what she could get.

Slowly, she let her hand drift up and stoke Bell's hair, seeking to soothe, if anything. Bell's shoulders, screaming with tension, sank a little, like a cat when stroked. "Honestly?" Leliana said. "I do not know. Travel, most likely. I have been too long in the Chantry, I think, and Ferelden is nice enough, I suppose, but there is so much out there." She smiled. "Perhaps Antiva."

Bell snorted again. "Zevran will be pleased."

"Zevran will be pleased to know that I've decided to forget his _numerous _proposals to show me around any number of sights," said Leliana crisply, to which Bell dissolved into helpless, wheezing laughter, the sound of which made a small, careful voice in the back of Leliana's mind say that this was dangerous, that she'd been down this road before, that she should never fall in love with someone who could not love her back.

She ignored it, and changed the subject. "You'll be coming with me, of course," she said lightly, her thumb tracing a soothing circle on the back of Bell's neck. "To Antiva. To Amaranthine." She raised her voice a little, for Sten's benefit. "To Seheron, even."

The Qunari said nothing.

Bell was likewise silent, and Leliana took that as a sign to continue, her voice as comforting as she knew how to make it. "We shall see the most wonderful plays, I think, in Antiva. They are known for their theatre, yes? And such food there will be, and music. Such _shopping, _as well," she smiled, slowly wrapping her hand around Bell's and squeezing softly. "We shall buy you new clothes, I think. _Dresses_, this time," she stressed carefully. "And jewelry to match. And every night we shall-"

"Stop." said Sten, bluntly.

Her head snapped up from her viewpoint of her boots, since she had hardly dared to look at Bell while spinning out her dreams.

"Excuse me?" she said. "Surely a few moments more will not-"

"Stop talking," he said impassively, and turned away, and that's when Leliana caught sight of Bell's face.

It was sort of…. Frozen, and broken at the same time. So very still, like someone who has received a mortal wound is still, and it hasn't quite taken hold yet.

She swiped at her face, then, and shrugged effortlessly out of Leliana's embrace while rising shakily to her feet. Shouldering her shield once more, her face seemed to lock itself behind steel doors, one after another.

"I've rested enough, I think," Bell said finally. Her voice was too firm, and her eyes still too bright, only now there was no quaver in her, no weakness. She looked brittle enough to break apart at the first blow, but she did not shake.

"I- yes," stammered Leliana, confused. "Of course. I'm sorry, I didn't mean-."

"No," said Bell, and smiled, even. She reached up and squeezed Leliana's arm, too hard, then let her hand drop. "We're going to get to the top of the tower, and I'm going to kill the big lizard, and everything will be better, and we'll get out of here, and and…." Her lips worked, struggling with some terrible, inner emotion that made Leliana _shrink_. She wanted to hold her, wanted to hold her close and stroke her hair and ask her what she was thinking that was so terrible and _why _had Morrigan left on the eve of battle and _why _wouldn't she look Alistair in the eye before she left him and _why was she so terrified?_

But then.

Bell's eyes snapped up, and suddenly, it was better.

She was herself again.

She looked amused, and resigned, and a little bit sad, and her lips bent into a smile so crooked it looked like it had healed wrong long ago, but she looked calmer, somehow.

Bell shrugged, lifted her hands, and said brightly, "And then everyone lives happily ever after, yeah?"

**0.-0.-0**


End file.
